About 6 or 7 years ago, while I was doing graduate work at Brigham Young University in Utah, I had the chance to investigate its collection of fishing books. What a find! Bowlker, Hofland, Blacker, Rhead and may others were present. In looking at the card catalog I noticed that the Blacker volume was in "the Vault". I was told that "the vault" held books worth "at least $1000.00", however I was not prepared to find the 1842 edition with a set of Blacker's flies actually tipped into the book and including the tying steps for that fly! In addition, this particular copy was in pristine condition and the flies were immaculate! I was initially taken with the flies and then I looked at the hooks, their finishes were like glass.

That was in 1986. In the meantime I got a job and moved out of my home state of Oregon and continued to tie salmon flies.

One day this last fall a good friend, Merle Smith, who had a job in the BYU library archive (he's still trying to get out of Utah!), called and offered to take some photos of the Blacker flies. The flies, as you can see, are quite a treat for us salmon fly afficionados and they offer a unique glimpse into the past.

Fig. 1 - Note the shape of the bend of the hook and the fine point and barb. The tag is quite small, only about three wraps of oval tinsel. Note that the tail is made up of a topping (nearly hidden by the other materials), tippet strands and macaw strands; all of which (including the topping) are the same length.

The body is made of 1/3 yellow silk with the rest appearing to be black Pig's wool or Seal's fur. The ribbing is actually two lengths of silver oval tinsel wrapped side-by-side together. I think there is a black hackle over the black fur. The throat is Jay.

The wing appears to be a mix of tippet strands, teal, bronze mallard and blue macaw with long lengths of blue and gold macaw for the horns. The head is wrapped with black herl.

Fig. 2 - This is an interesting fly. Again notice the small amount of tinsel at the tip with a very small amount of yellow silk (almost invisible) for the tag. Also notice the very long tail - shades of Michael Rogan? Remember, Blacker moved from Ireland to the Soho district of London in 1842. The body appears to be of brown wool although there appears to be well picked-out red fur at the front. The throat hackle appears to be brown.

It looks to me like the wings are not fully attached yet as the butts appear to be untrimmed. The wings are of bronze mallard.

Fig. 3 - Obviously this is an unfinished fly but I thought to include it as it shows a different tail and body. Note the macaw and tippet tail. The tag seems to be made of three different colors of silk.

I was reading Mikael Frodin's book The Classic Salmon Fly the other night and he points out that the flies in Blacker's first book were much simpler than in later volumes. Several references exist attesting to Blacker's skill in fly tying. Here we can see with our own eyes that this was indeed true!